Last year Sunrise Children's Services, a group that operates treatment centers and shelters for abused and neglected youth in Kentucky, was considering a proposal to repeal the group's ban on LGBT employees. Just considering this idea caused several church groups to withhold their usual contributions, resulting in a $7.5 million shortfall, out of the group's traditional annual budget of $27 million. In other words, some churches in Kentucky actually think that it is more important to discriminate against gay people than to help children. Like, those are the actual priorities.

So this is where we are now. While lots of churches have already opened their hearts to LGBT people and even more are engaging in the hard, soul searching work of figuring out how to approach these issues in an inclusive yet uniquely Christian context, there are still groups that would rather cut off services to children in need than allow the hiring of gay people. I don't often use the phrase, "a special place in hell," but I think it might apply here.

I mean, Jesus spoke at length about the importance of helping those less fortunate. It's practically all he did talk about, according to the Gospels. On the other hand he mentioned homosexuality exactly zero times. So it's one thing when people call homophobia a Christian value. It's a whole different level of outrageous when people think homophobia is a more important Christian value than helping kids.